Bad Religion - New Maps of Hell Review

25 Years and still on top of the heap

There has never been a more intelligent band in the history of punk rock. No, scratch that. There has never been a more intelligent band in the history of music. Period. Bad Religion sits atop the heap, alone, awaiting the day that the world finally understands the purpose the band serves, the meaning the members espouse and the reality they so desperately crave - but deep down inside know they will never see.

The band's latest effort is its 14th full-length album and 20th release overall. The album is as focused as any of the band's past records; its messages are as poignant and trenchant as ever; it is musically as tight as the band has ever sounded; and lyrically, it is everything a fan should expect from lead singer and principal lyric writer Greg Graffin: perspicacious, penetrating, sage and felicitous.

The album starts off with a track entitled "52 Seconds" that really gets to the heart of everything Bad Religion has exhorted over the past quarter century, "I know I'm a part of something greater than myself," Graffin screams. "Don't know the meaning of it but I hope that matters less. I don't know anything when I'm factored out of scale. I know I'm a part of something greater than myself."

Mr. Brett, a co-founding member of the band and one of three guitarists (along with Greg Hetson, another original band member, and Brian Baker) leads the blistering introduction assault as bassist Jay Bentley and drummer Brooks Wackerman play along. The music harkens back to Suffer-era Bad Religion and should please those long-time fans who cling to "the golden era" of the Southern California punk outfit. But this album is not about looking back to past glories; in fact, there are times that the music on New Maps of Hell is heavier, darker and faster than anything the band has ever put out. For specific examples, check out the song "Murder".

The band tackles current events with a song called "Heroes & Martyrs." In the song, Graffin sings of wars being fought in the name of religion. "Tell me which deity you're praying to. Into a welter of night flack, rounds and rolling blight, cracked vertebrates stacked by the wayside; an ultra-violent call summoning both poet and thrall."

Throughout the album, the band tackles social, religious and political injustices and rails against those who have made the world a place where this kind of vitriol is necessary. The best example is a song called "Grains of Wrath" where Graffin sings of how little has changed for the better in the past 20 years. "Back in '83 a man came to me and he told me 'son our way of life is done'. But I was only young," Graffin sings. Later in the song, he tells us all that he wants to see the present course changed. "Is profit and greed the only conceit on a scale between mere propensity and inhumanity? It may well be but I don't wanna be in the land known as destitute and free."

Punk is an attitude. It's a way of life. But most of all - and this is the point that most people miss - it's about respect for the fans and of people and society in general. Bad Religion knows this, lives this, and continues to be the band that best exemplifies the ideal of punk rock. New Maps of Hell is the band's 14th full-length attempt to change its own little corner of the world.